How do I merge duplicate entries in 1Password?

SV1passUser
SV1passUser
Community Member

Hi 1Password support,

Thanks for the great product. I've been using it for a while and love the features and security. I do have a pretty messy primary "vault" of passwords though, which contains multiple entries for lots of sites I've used. I would like to keep my password history (some of the entries have an older set of credentials and some a newer set), and sometimes the older entries have more information like security questions or whatever. Often times it's a change to the login URL (usually at the same site, but sometimes like "scholarshare.com" the back-end provider has changed). Therefore, I would love a "merge" function where I could take the information from two or more entries. Any chance that will ever make production? I see that multiple people have asked about this in the past but the response is always "why would you want to merge, you should find duplicates and delete the old stuff" type of answer.

Thanks in advance for considering my request ...!


1Password Version: 5.4 (540046)
Extension Version: 4.4.3.90
OS Version: OS X 10.11.2
Sync Type: Not Provided
Referrer: kb:remove-duplicate-passwords

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Comments

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @SV1passUser,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your feedback & request! I can't say for sure if we'll ever have an option to merge two different items, but I can pass your feature request along to our developers. It sounds like something that could come in handy! For now, you would need to manually copy/paste information from one item to the other, then delete the duplicate that you don't need.

    Aside from that, I hope you're enjoying 1Password. Please let us know if you need anything else! :)

  • steveyg777
    steveyg777
    Community Member

    The amount of issues people ask for (and there are about of us wanting these features) and you just say lame things like "is under consideration" etc. It's ridiculous! You have been "considering" meeting abilities for a couple of years! It's down right ignorant, lazy and neglectful towards your customers! The apps cost a fortune and you have a crap attitude of feeling like you can just fob is off. It would be more understandable if the requests were really obscure and fairly irrelevant but these are some core, important features that would make using and managing or data a hell of a lot easier which would mean much more satisfied and happy customers.

    I really don't care about 3d touch id implementation etc when youre completely ignoring such basic and essential features (like merging)

    I am aware of the amount of updates and so is clear you aren't lazy developers, just ignorant more-so

  • Hi @steveyg777,

    We have to think long and hard before implementing any features. Even ones that seem like no-brainers to a lot of people. Every feature comes with hidden costs of maintaining them over time, and figuring out what to do with them years later when they no longer really fit in the product anymore. It's incredibly difficult to remove features, and our number one mechanism for avoiding that is to avoid adding features that we aren't confident will stand the test of time.

    I hear what you're saying though. For myself... having Merge available to me would be more useful than 3D touch (I always forget 3D touch even exists on my phone). The iOS team is different from the Mac team though, so we don't have to pick and choose those things. And just because I myself don't use 3D touch doesn't mean there aren't a ton of users who do use it and love it.

    Rick

  • steveyg777
    steveyg777
    Community Member

    I don't think that actually justifies as a satisfactory reply. Merging IS a core feature that is needed if we are to maintain our database of passwords and not a feature you would ever want to remove again.

    It is not an optional extra. Otherwise many of us would get messy databases and half start not bothering to use 1password as much. I myself use lastpass too as sometimes it catches passwords that 1password misses and is actually a quicker and mostly smoother application.

    I don't only direct my comments towards ios but mac and pc too, it is meant to be an integrated experience across all devices and ought to have core features across the board.

    The fact that someone brought this request up in 2011 (maybe earlier?) doesn't justify still saying we have to consider things for a long time. The lack of still not implementing it after five years (!) makes me wonder if you have bothered thinking about it at all.

    You talk about costs but you do charge a small fortune for the Mac app and, if i want to have my passwords available on my phone (obviously everyone would want and use that) i have to throw almost another £10 at it. You can't say you don't get enough money to implement and maintain a merge feature in my opinion.

    I don't think it's a case of carefully considering but more a case of getting very much needed and essential features implemented. I feel like shouting "what the hell are you playing at?" regarding the merge feature too be quite honest. if the software was free i would to put up with it but as it stands i don't feel i should have to. I feel totally ignored, especially as it is such an important tool, it has been requested for soooo long, you have made the effort to close conversations that bring this feature up so no one can voice their desire for it and you seem to have no interest in implementing it.

    I'm (half) sorry but if i offend anyone so be it, it's not my intention but i do aim to get my feelings about this across

  • Hi @steveyg777 ,

    No offense taken at all. One of the things we love about our customers is how passionate they are about our product and requested features.

    I certainly agree that merging would be a very useful feature. I've wanted it myself many times. Merging is a feature that is very difficult to do properly. Not that we aren't capable of doing it, we just have to make sure that it is functional and safe, especially since it deals with modifying user data. The logic seems simple enough, but it's the edge cases that make it difficult.

    That said, I can see why you're frustrated that merging isn't available yet, after it's been requested for so long. But with any software project we have to consider the needs of all of our users. Even other features that you or I do not care about, are much more essential to many users than merging items. Prioritizing what we work on is not simply doing what's requested most or the most passionately. We have to take many factors into account. Demand is one of them, but time and complexity, how it affects usability, safety and security of data, and more. For example, if 100 people requested a new feature, but it may cause 5 people to accidentally destroy their data, we'd either have to rethink how to do it or say no.

    In the past other improvements have taken priority over merging, that is evident. That does not mean it'll go the same way in the future. But something we, and many software vendors, can not do is promise "we'll do it by this date" because we don't know what will happen between now and then. A bug could come along that demands our attention, an OS upgrade might come that requires us to do work to support it, etc.

    For these reasons, I would suggest that the answers we've been giving you in this thread are actually more honest than promising that we will have the feature implemented by x date. Promising a date that then becomes impossible due to factors beyond our control is not something that we are willing to do. It's just not fair to our users. I'm sorry that you feel that our answers were less than honest, but I hope that my reply here has helped to explain our reasoning.

    Regards,
    Kevin

  • jsdurling
    jsdurling
    Community Member

    Any progress on this feature?

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @jsdurling,

    Thanks so much for letting us know that you’re interested in a feature like this! I don’t have any updates for you at this time, but I’ll be sure to let the team know that merge would be useful to you.

    In the meantime, if you have entries that you would like to compare and merge, 1Password mini makes it simple to look at multiple entries at a time. Try this:

    1. Locate the duplicate entry in 1Password mini.
    2. While viewing the details, click the Anchor icon in the bottom corner of the window to pin the details to your screen.

    Now, you can look at your entries side by side with the main app, and click to copy any details that need to be migrated into the other item.

    I hope this helps!

  • ohcibi
    ohcibi
    Community Member

    I'm a developer myself. I know and I buy the argument that features need to be maintained and cannot be easily thrown in. But this is an app that manages a database. To merge 2 items from a database-app is something I'd expect in version 1.0, I would not consider this application as remotely ready if a merge-feature was missing. So please beloved dev-team, get your things straight and implement that darn thang.

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @ohcibi,

    Thanks so much for the feedback here, I’ll pass it along to our development team. :)

  • TrixieKQ
    TrixieKQ
    Community Member

    @Megan - Thank you for the work around hint. It helped me.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Excellent! Thanks for the update. On behalf of Megan, you are most welcome! I'm glad to hear that all is well. It sounds like you should be all set, but don't hesitate to reach out if we can be of further assistance. We're always here to help! :)

  • Tomiangu
    Tomiangu
    Community Member

    Can anyone please explain to me why no one is using the 'export to CSV' option, then merging the different (prior exported) vaults together via Excel and finally importing them??
    Perhaps I am missing something here but that's how I merge different vaults into one. Is this not working on a Mac? Too much work? You don't get a job on Voyager if you can't come up with something like this... ;)

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks for the suggestion, @Tomiangu!

    Merging vaults is actually pretty easy, and there are multiple ways to do that - there's the export/import option you mentioned, or you could select all items in one vault and go to Item > Share > [destination vault] > Move, or (if using local/standalone vaults instead of a 1Password account) you can use the Dropbox or Folder sync option to point both vaults towards the same .agilekeychain or .opvault sync file.

    What others have been asking for in this discussion is an option to merge different items together. If you have multiple items in a vault that are similar and you want to combine them into just one item, the best way to do that is currently to copy/paste fields between those items. Or you could export those items to a CSV file, edit that file, then import it back into the vault, but I'm not sure that's much easier. I think others in this thread would like a feature where they can select multiple items and click a button that automatically combines them into one item, with nothing to clean up afterwards (possibly doing things such as removing duplicate data/fields, determining which data to keep or remove based on modified data, etc). In other words, an option to do all that without manually copying/pasting or exporting/editing/importing.

    A feature like that is easier said than done, but it would certainly be helpful in certain situations. :)

  • petr_peller
    petr_peller
    Community Member

    This is a feature I am also missing a lot. For some reason importing a backup export file (1Password -> 1Password) duplicated almost all password entries so I have everything twice or three times. It's quite annoying and I really can't go one by one and remove the duplicates myself. I don't understand why importing a file does not skip already existing items...

  • chzumbrunnen
    chzumbrunnen
    Community Member

    I also am frustrated now. I realized to not have used the online vault on this computer and after moving everything is duplicated.
    Export is not available (greyed out)

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @petr_peller: It's because each item has a UUID — a Universally Unique IDentifier — associated with it. While I appreciate that this is frustrating for you in this situation, these are, in fact, truly unique, so that you don't have to worry about overwriting data incorrectly the other 99% of the time when that would be a disaster.

    Can I ask, if you want to restore from the exported data, why not create a new vault to import? Then you won't have any duplicates at all. Alternatively, using 1Password's built in backup/restore feature automates this, and doesn't involve insecure (plaintext) exported data.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2016

    @chzumbrunnen: Please see my previous reply. There's probably a better way, and we're happy to help. :)

    ref: HQK-64822-845

  • craigfullerton
    craigfullerton
    Community Member

    i'm in the same boat here - i recently upgraded to Family and moved my existing Dropbox vault items into my new 1Password account.
    i regularly work across multiple macs though, and when i switched over to another mac, 1password on that mac identified the new account and offered to load it up, etc. it also offered to "move" the items to the new account - which result in several hundred dupes. (i've been using 1Password for about 7 years now).

    since all these items came from the same Dropbox vault, surely they would have had the same UUID? what caused the duplication?

    finally, is there any script access to the items in my vault? i'm sure i can code myself out of this mess, if nothing else.

    thanks


    craig

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    since all these items came from the same Dropbox vault, surely they would have had the same UUID? what caused the duplication?

    @craigfullerton: Excellent question! In fact, when copying an item to another vault, it will have a new UUID (similar to if you duplicated it in the same vault). After all, the Us in UUID are for Universally Unique (IDentifier). Obviously, in this case that poses a bit of a problem, but it's pretty important that they're unique. What if you'd copied data to another vault (perhaps to share it) and it was modified, if you copied it back, it overwrote your original item? I know a case can be made either way, and that "duplicates" are annoying; but data loss is much worse. :(

    finally, is there any script access to the items in my vault? i'm sure i can code myself out of this mess, if nothing else.

    There isn't, but honestly that would be more work for you anyway! Its probably simpler to delete the data in the target vault, and then simply re-copy it only once this time. I hope this helps. Be sure to let me know if you have any other questions! :)

  • Afieldsmd
    Afieldsmd
    Community Member

    I'm writing to keep "re-upping" this request. I've been on 1password for a while but now I'm on 1password for families (previously had dropbox and teams) and I have many duplicates. One suggestion I had would be a website walk through. My gmail account can show me things that it thinks could be duplicates. For 1password it could be something like records that have the same URL or title. Then it could show me the data in all of the fields side by side and ask me if I would like to merge it into the 1st or 2nd UUID. Maybe a big "arrow" button a the bottom. It would then copy any missing data from one UUID to the other and delete the one copied from. I love that you guys do this in a considered and measured way. I truly do. So please continue to do due diligence to make sure this is a safe feature. But it's been over a year just on this thread.

  • Afieldsmd
    Afieldsmd
    Community Member

    I posted a comment in a similar thread here: https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/54275/how-do-i-merge-duplicate-entries-in-1password? Could we get an admin to merge these threads?

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @Afieldsmd,

    Thank you for taking the time to write in with your thoughts about this! I hope you don't mind, but we merged your message from the other thread into this discussion where you first posted about it.

    The ability to merge duplicate items together would definitely be helpful in the (hopefully rare) situations where that happens to many items! Perhaps we'll be able to add something like that at some point, although I can't make promises about if/when that will happen. It's not as easy to implement this as it might seem, so it would take a big commitment of time & resources to do it (and do it right). Our developers are also trying to help prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place, so hopefully that means less of a need for a feature to merge entire vaults full of duplicates. But that doesn't mean we'll never add an item-merging feature, and I can add your comments to our internal tracker to let our developers know you're interested in that.

    Thanks again for your feedback, we appreciate it! If you need anything else, please let us know. :)

  • jo_chen
    jo_chen
    Community Member

    Hi,

    after the first feature request from December 2015, I want to ask once more for it. After several changes of devices etc. I now find my entries tripled, making 2304 entries. A duplictate finder would help me a lot! I do not want to export and re-import my sensitive passwords ...

    Thnx

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    @jo_chen, thank you for letting us know you're interested in a feature to merge duplicated items. I'm sorry you ended up with so many! If you'd like some help to avoid that happening again in the future, please let us know some more details and we'll try to figure out why it happened in the first place. :)

  • variousred
    variousred
    Community Member

    I need this feature a well. I'd just copy and paste from one item to the other, but that is awkward and cumbersome with the password history data (previously used passwords)

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks for letting us know, @variousred! Just in case it helps, I wanted to mention a tip to make copying & pasting between items a little easier:

    • Open the main 1Password app and find the item where you want to paste details.
    • Click the 1Password mini icon in your Mac's menubar and find the item containing the details you want to copy.
    • Click the anchor button at the bottom of the item details (or use ⌘O) to open them in a window.
    • At this point, you can easily copy and paste details from the mini window to the item in the main app.

    I know that's not as convenient as some sort of "merge" button might be, but I thought it might come in handy for you.

    Have a great weekend! :)

  • scotnery
    scotnery
    Community Member

    I want this feature too. I have duplicates of every single one of my passwords except the 20 that i added recently. At first it's fine because the duplicates are exact duplicates, but when I update a password in the app, it only updates one of the duplicates. Also, for some sites like google, i have several logins and they get pushed way down the list by so many duplicates.

    1password really comes across as a buggy app since there's no way to deal with this in a normal way.

    1.) make it possible to merge records that the user feels are duplicates
    2.) notice and prompt user when there's a login for the same domain with the same username

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @scotnery: Many users have logins for the same TLD with the same username, and I think it's a matter of choice. You can delete these if you wish. I understand that your proliferation of logins is not desirable to you, but this is up to you. It doesn't seem like a bug in 1Password if you're saving multiple logins and it's keeping them secure for you. What would be a bug would be if 1Password arbitrarily decided to delete/merge logins you've explicitly saved in it. That's data loss, and while having multiple logins for the same site might not be convenient for you, it's your choice, and is much less inconvenient than 1Password users losing data because the app takes it upon itself to try to "clean up" our messes. There are apps like this already, and they are notable in that they often delete things we don't want them to. That's not something we want 1Password to do. It's job is to securely store what we give it.

  • scotnery
    scotnery
    Community Member

    I'm not saying to automatically lose any data. I'm saying to prompt user when a duplicate seems to occur. I don't want 1password to arbitrarily delete records. It isn't an easy listening station.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Ah, thanks for clarifying. I guess I misinterpreted your suggestion since this discussion is primarily about having 1Password do the work for us and automating the process to an extent. Having 1Password prompt the user regarding duplicates definitely helps us avoid data loss situations, but then we're right back to where we are today: having to decide ourselves what to keep and what to toss.

This discussion has been closed.